Getting To The Bottom of This.
Summary: Tall Tales wasn't all it was cracked up to be. The majority of Sam's irritability came from the fact he was sick, and not only of his brother. The boy's stay at Ellen's to recuperate, but she ships them to an old family friend after she gets fed up with their bickering. As both brothers recall old memories of their so-called 'Aunt Mandy' more questions surface than answers; why does she move so much? Why did she disappear for such long periods of time throughout their childhoods? How does she know Bobby, Ellen and John? And what is with her fascination of water and local aquariums? As Sam gets better, neither brother can help but wonder what her secret is and why she hid it for so long.
Disclaimer: I don't claim to own anything belonging to the "Supernatural" realm. I will put my stamp of approval on all original characters, and hope they meet the fandom's high standards. All characters pictures can be found on my homepage. Almost all is revealed; did you predict this too? Review and let me know!
Chapter 11
"How old are you Mandy?" Sam called from the dining room table, not looking up from his computer as he researched a case. Dean had been mysteriously absent from lunch this afternoon, claiming he was doing research on his own for the case. Sam presumed he meant something else entirely, so he didn't question it, he was just thankful both of them were finally feeling better and could move onto finding an actual hunt.
"Ya know it's not polite to ask a woman's age," she answered dismissively as she started cooking dinner.
"Mandy, exactly how old are you?" He questioned again.
"Old enough-"
"To know everything I need to know. Old enough to have seen everything I need to see, and old enough to know when you need to stop playin' twenty questions and go back to sleep Sam Winchester!" Sam finished for her, walking into the kitchen and standing next to her at the oven, smirking. "You always say the same thing every time I ask."
"Well, that's because you always ask when you're sick as a dog and won't let me give you any medicine for it- you're just looking for a distraction." She paused as she stirred the pan on the stove, one hand on her hip. "Or when ya are just on the brink of coming down with somethin' particularly nasty and are still tryin' to distract me."
"Well how come you never answer?"
"Because then you'll ask more questions and I'll have to answer them, and you'll want to know my entire life story-"
"Which we don't know by the way," Sam muttered under his breath, causing Mandy to glare at him. "What? All we know is you lived in Maine for a while and now you move around a lot."
"And?"
"How come you move around so much? You never live in the same place for more than a few years, not counting The Roadhouse or Bobby's. How come you know so much about all this supernatural crap we hunt, because I know you're not a hunter."
"How come you haven't aged since we first met you Mandy?" Dean asked, entering the room and throwing a beat up photo down on the table, beer in hand. "Dad had it in his wallet," he said as Mandy picked up the wrinkled picture, gingerly turning it over to read the handwritten inscription on the back.
Sammy, Dean, John and Miranda.
1989.
"Dean, is your stomach still botherin' ya? Ya didn't come downstairs for lunch and claimed you weren't hungry when breakfast was ready." Mandy asked, trying to change the topic. Dean crossed his arms, face stern and upset.
"Well?"
"It's hard to explain," she muttered as she ran her fingers over the yellowing photograph, over John's face and then her own.
"To explain what? Why you haven't aged in almost twenty years? Come on Mandy, how dumb do you think we are? What are you?" Dean demanded as Sam tried to calm him down.
"Dean-"
"Sammy, don't tell me this doesn't seem fishy to you!"
"Okay, I'll admit it's odd but-"
"But nothing! We need to-"
"You need to shut your mouth and listen good because I am only gonna tell you this once." Sam and Dean looked at her, both of Dean's arms folded around his chest.
"Mandy?"
"It's actually Melvina," she said with a heavy sigh as she sat down, motioning for the boys to follow, which both reluctantly did. "When the townsfolk decided they wanted the community to have more Christianized names they changed it to Maranda or Miranda, depending on who wrote it. It became Manda or Mandy when Sammy couldn't pronounce Miranda," Mandy said with a light laugh.
"Melvina? That's one heck of a name," Sam joked. Mandy continued.
"In 1987, when you two were busy collecting sea shells and playing Skee Ball in Maine, your Daddy came across a very odd case, or rather ya could say the case found him. He caught wind of a few deaths of the local fishermen who were killed by seals."
"Seals?" Sam asked incredulously.
"Yup. Your Daddy did some research and found out that in the past one hundred years over seventeen males had been killed, but he couldn't figure out why. The second to last day of your trip, bored and walking up and down the docks, ya came across one of the fisherman's wife's staring longingly at the sea. Sam sat down next to her and without any hesitation you squeezed her hand. Everything will be okay, ya said. And she smiled for the first time in ages and believed ya." Sam stayed quiet as he tried to remember doing this.
"What does that have to do with-" Dean interrogated.
"I'm gettin' to it! Calm down! Gosh!" She paused as she took a sip from Dean's beer, smiling at him, clearly registering that the open beer was spiked with holy water. Sam and Dean exchanged a glance. "Thanks sugar; and that holy water just waters it out. Well, as it turned out, when ya told your Daddy who you ran into he just so happened to be up to his neck in newspaper clippings. Dean quickly recognized the same young lady in a picture from the local paper. It was dated 1903."
"1903?" Sam asked incredulously.
"Turns out she's been here for almost one hundred years, tied to the land."
"She? What was she?"
"A selkie. She came to the land one day to sit in the sun and one of those god damn fishermen stole her hide," Mandy spat the last part of the sentence out, getting angrier as she spoke. "She had to obey him until he gave it back, which he never did. She was passed into three towns, three men, three families until your Daddy put a stop to it. See, he found the hide and stopped all the killings; the seals were just trying to get their daughter back."
"Mandy…"
"She swore she'd repay your Daddy for saving her, and then she stepped foot in the ocean for the first time in almost a hundred years."
"And?" Sam questioned as she paused her story. It seemed like Mandy was blinking back tears as she finished.
"But bad blood runs deep with the selkies, and she was disowned from her clan for keeping up contact with the humans." Her breath hitched as she said the next part. "Within a year she was back to being confined to land."
"Mandy, are you…"
"Oh Sammy, I wanted to believe ya so bad when you said everything would be okay." Now openly crying, she used the corner of her apron to wipe the tears from her face. "It was like the God's were taunting me."
"Funny you should mention those newspapers Dad found, because I found them too." Dean pulled a stack of folded computer paper from his back pocket and threw it onto the table, quickly knitting his brows together before returning to glair at her. Mandy didn't have to look at them to know what they were.
"You don't understand-"
"That doesn't matter Miranda! How could you not tell us, tell me?"
"Dean, listen to what she's saying; it doesn't change anything-" Sam said, trying to calm his brother down.
"It doesn't change anything? It changes everything Sam! She's a…"
"If you say monster you're givin' me permission to smack ya."
"Shut up Miranda!" Dean rounded on her, standing up and pushing her against the wall. Sam tried to pull his brothers arm off his aunts shoulder, but Dean pushed him away, swaying a little as he gained his footing.
"Dean!"
"You can't pretend everything is just going to go back to normal- we just found out you're a seal Miranda!" Mandy opened her mouth to say something, but Dean continued to speak. "If you lied about this, what else is a lie?"
"I never lied; I just didn't tell ya the entire truth."
"What else have you hid from us? What other secrets do you have?"
"Dean, stop!" Sam stood helpless on the sidelines as his brother verbally assaulted their aunt.
"No Sam, you stop. Look at her," he said, sneering. "She's just a pathetic thing that couldn't stay out of trouble-"
"Ya have no idea what I've been through!" Mandy said as Dean grabbed the back of her head and pulled her closer to him. Sam's fists clenched in anger.
"No idea? I have no idea huh? Well I don't care what your excuse is; the fact of the matter is that you're not even human. No matter what you say or do, you can't change that."
"I'm not trying to!" She said; gasping as Dean saw her hand sneaking to her back pocket. He quickly grabbed her wrist, causing her to wince in pain and drop the pocket knife she held in her hand. It clattered to the floor, falling near Sam.
"Stop it!"
"Dean!" Sam yelled, brandishing the pocket knife and holding it near his brother's neck.
"You're hurtin' me Dean!"
"Good," he said, but didn't get to finish as Mandy's left fist collided with his jaw. Dropping her other hand as Sam threw the knife to the ground, Mandy took that moment to move away from both Dean and the wall, but not before he could grab her shoulder. Twisting her around, Dean was confronted with Mandy's forehead as she head-butted him. Sam smiled as Dean saw stars.
"Knock it off Sam!" Dean was ready to round on Sam, but not before Sam could punch his brother in the face, giving Mandy a moment to run out the back door. "SAM!"
"What the hell Dean? You just tried to beat up our aunt, who instead beat the shit out of you!"
"She's not even human Sam!" Sam pushed his brother, causing him to grunt and stumble. Both looked at the kitchen window as they heard a car engine start and peel down the street. "You held a knife to me!"
"You're an idiot!" Sam said, ignoring his brother's last comment. "How can you say that? After all she's done for you, for us?"
"If we didn't know her, we might have hunted her down." Dean admitted reluctantly. "She's a supernatural creature Sam, that's what we do."
"But she hasn't hurt anyone!"
"Yet! How do we know she didn't get those seals to attack those guys all those years back? Huh? Revenge is a dish best served cold."
"I can't believe what I'm hearing," Sam said, shaking his head. "You're suggesting our aunt, the aunt who feels bad when she has to kill a bug, sent a bunch of seals to do her dirty work?"
"Something like that, yeah. Think about it Sam," Dean said as he sat down at the table, rubbing his sore jaw and then abdomen. Sam sat across from him, allowing Dean to continue. "They were holding her captive on land for like, eighty years at that time."
"And?"
"And she may have just wanted to go home, but from the first moment she was here guys started dropping dead. From seal deaths Sam, coincidence?"
"Mandy said they were defending her-"
"By trying to get her back? Or because she told them to defend her?" Dean's cell phone rang, interrupting his speech. "Shit, its Bobby." Flipping open his phone, he didn't even get a chance to speak before Bobby pounced on him.
"What the hell is your problem Dean Winchester! Attacking your aunt-"
"She's a fuckin' seal Bobby! Why didn't you tell us?"
"Why does it matter? So what if she's a selkie, she's still your aunt!"
"She was never my aunt, just like you were never my uncle!"
"Family don't end with blood boy," Bobby spat into the phone, hanging up.
"Wow, someone's mad," Sam said sarcastically as Dean threw his phone to the table, watching it slide across and stop near the center with the salt and pepper.
"Not helping Sam!"
"Hey, you started this!" Sam pushed his chair away from the table, standing up. "You got us into this mess, so you'll get us out."
"She-"
"But you're the idiot who pushed her into a wall and called her inhuman." Sam turned away from his brother, still seeing red as he thought of what he'd done to his aunt. "Oh, and I'd probably read Dad's journal again, especially the part where we're in Maine solving a case."
"Sam?"
"I can't even be in the same room as you right now," he muttered as he walked upstairs and slammed his bedroom door. Dean let out a frustrating groan as he stomped to his duffle bag, pulling out John's journal.
"Let's see what all the commotion is about huh?" Dean muttered, sitting down on the couch and flipping open to the summer of 1987.
Found a case today, or rather a case found us.
Poor thing, Melvina.
Thought she was a lady in white, La Lorona from the way she looked in that white dress of hers.
Then the boys helped out- especially Sammy. Don't know how he does it, but he knows things that boy. It's scary how he finds stuff out on his own and just says it like it's common knowledge. He said 'Manda looks like she misses somethin' real bad,' and then mentioned that she smelled like the ocean.
And I think Dean's onto something of his own too; he's recognized Melvina's face in some old newspapers- from 1903. It's just too bad what has happened to her, in her life. So much sadness and pain inside someone who has so many reasons to be happy. It makes me think what'll happen to Sammy when he grows up, if he'll want to pursue this whole 'normal, apple pie' thing and just run away from us- his family. Of course Melvina's story is different than ours, but there's so much death in her past eighty years -seventeen deaths to be exact, and not to mention the death of three husbands. One forced her to move to Georgia because she was staring at the ocean too much, and the other made sure she'd never procreate… if you catch my drift.
When the boys are older, and can understand this kind of thing, I'll explain this entire story if need be. Maybe it won't need to be explained, but Melvina has this presence that says she'll be around- and not just in that eternal life kind-of way.